People...BIG PICTURE for a moment....

We are entering an age of wonderous and HISTORIC scientific discovery. Rovers on Mars, snapping pictures of an alien landscape, discovering WATER (one of the necessary building blocks for life as we know it)....Cassini orbiting Saturn and an opportunity to land a rover on an alien moon...probes capturing material from comets and the solar wind....this is the stuff that expands our knowledge of the Universe and helps to define our place in it.

I am not saying that feeding the hungry isn't important. It's damn important. However, it is a flawed argument that suggests a choice between feeding hungry people and expanding mankind's knowledge. We cannot and must not foresake one for the other.

This is why I was buoyed by the President's proposal for the future exploration of space. Are they lofty goals? Absolutely. Can we pay for it? Sure. Should we pay for it? Not sure. But I do know that if you reach for stars but only get to the moon, you've still gone a long way.

President Kennedy was right to dream big...we should do the same.


rabbit